The Marine Corps’ top general pledged yesterday to fight a Senate committee’s attempt to kill the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV).
Commandant Gen. James Amos stood by the deal his service recently worked out with the Army for a more-affordable version of the developmental vehicle, which has had spotty support in the past and the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) wants to cancel this year.
“Now what were doing is going back to Congress and saying, ‘OK, you’ve got the two largest services that are in cahoots on this JLTV,’” Amos said during an address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Now what we’ve got to do is go back to Congress and get their support on it.”
The Marine Corps leader said his expeditionary service needs the JLTV, which is intended to provide more blast protection than the Humvee and can travel off-road more easily than a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP).
“As we look to the future in places we might deploy or our nation might send Marines, we’re going to have to send some vehicles that have some heavier protection on them, that have a higher mobility than an MRAP has on it,” Amos said. “MRAPs are very difficult if not impossible to take off road. So that’s when things like the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle comes in.”
The Army and Marine Corps recently agreed to a new acquisition plan that pares back the JLTV design, trimming its per-vehicle cost and planned duration of its forthcoming Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. Army officials also touted the new acquisition strategy yesterday at a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subpanel hearing, when a government auditor questioned the program’s affordability in light of Humvee recapitalizing efforts.
Three contractor teams have built prototypes for the JLTV’s current Technology Development (TD) phase: the General Tactical Vehicles (GTV) team of General Dynamics [GD] and AM General; BAE Systems-Navistar Defense LLC, an affiliate of Navistar International Corp. [NAV]; and Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE.
The SAC calls for outright eliminating the JLTV program in the fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill it approved Sept. 15, which the full Senate has not yet debated. The House-passed version of the FY ’12 legislation would only reduce the Pentagon’s request for the JLTV, cutting $50 million from the $244 million request.
The SAC’s report on its bill cites multiple JLTV concerns, including that “as a result of increasing requirements” the scheduled EMD phase doubled from 24 to 48 months, and project EMD costs more than doubled to $670 million. The panel also faults the services’ “limited acquisition objectives” for JLTV, which would replace one-third of the Army’s Humvees and make up one-quarter of the Marine Corps’ future tactical vehicle fleet.
“Furthermore, the JLTV program, which was initially launched as a model for a revised acquisition approach, has already had significant changes in requirements and cost growth,” the SAC report says, predicting that “projected acquisition costs will make the program unaffordable in this challenging economic environment.” The panel calls for investing some requested JLTV funds on Humvee upgrades.
Yet since the SAC marked up its bill, Marine Corps and Army officials have said support in their services has greatly increased for the JLTV.
“There has been a sea change in the program over the last couple of months,” William Taylor, the Marine Corps program executive officer for Land Systems, said in a Sept.15 interview. “Almost miraculously in the last two months the services have come to closure and gained consensus on requirements. So we now have agreement on joint requirements between the Army and the Marine Corps…and a path to an affordable vehicle.”
Taylor acknowledged that previously there had been “divergent requirements between the services, indecisiveness with respect to requirements, inability to achieve some requirements, and certainly cost and weight concerns by both of the services.”
The Army issued a new draft request for proposals for the JLTV on Oct. 3. It cites a per-vehicle cost ranging from $230,000 to $270,000, or roughly $100,000 million less than previous estimates.
Lt. Gen. Robert Lennox, deputy Army chief of staff and Lt. Gen. William Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said yesterday the JLTV program has undergone “significant changes” this year, including the new common requirements agreed to by the Army and Marine Corps. The new requirements, notably, allow the vehicles to be heavier so they can have desired protection levels.
The Army officials said in written testimony to the HASC’s Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee that the JLTV’s Technology Development phase “demonstrated which capabilities are both mature and affordable allowing us to revise our Acquisition Strategy for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase thereby reducing cost and schedule by approximately fifty percent.”
“The new design will still increase fuel efficiency over that of the (Humvee) and MRAP while providing greater payload, protection and network capability than the (Humvee) and provides the ability to grow future capability,” they wrote.
However, Belva Martin, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office, raised concerns during the hearing about the affordability of buying new JLTVs while also recapitalizing some existing Humvees.
In written testimony she said the Pentagon and services will “be facing some tough decisions in the future on the tactical wheeled vehicle programs and the affordability of both the JLTV and the (Humvee) recapitalization effort.”